How much do you tell your friends what you are doing/have planned etc ?

[poncholady]

I have a friend I see all the time .. but I don't share everything with her. We chat everyday about our day to day things .. eg work has been busy today, I had to go into the city for a client meeting, I'm watching EE on TV tonight, type-of-thing, but I leave things out. I don't mention:

That I have a PT come to my house twice a week
That I go for very long walks every weekend, alone
If me and my partner are out for dinner/drinks

@Biscuits4 the glasses thing is pretty normal though, isn't it?

@poncholady you mentioned about going for a walk, I would never say that to someone because that's just normal life. It's like saying I put a load of laundry on. Why would I tell somebody that?

I keep my cards close to my chest. I am a reasonably sociable person, and would happily talk about things of general interest in my social circle. My financial affairs, and health problems, are not things I am willing to go into detail about. If I felt that they needed to know certain things, then they would know.

I don't think I have a policy on disclosures to friends.

More information needed, OP. Why, for instance, don't you tell the friend you see all the time about going for long solo walks or having a personal trainer, or if you're going out with your partner? What's the difference, for you, between that and going to a client meeting or what you're watching on TV?

I have close friends that I meet up with every few weeks and we talk about everything and anything. But we would never message every day or talk about what we’ve done each day, particularly if it’s just routine things. I don’t even talk about some of those things with my partner as they don’t feel that interesting . I would happily tell friends about the things you’ve said but only if asked or there was a reason

I wouldn't tell a friend every time I went on a walk, of course not. But that is different from a friend not knowing, in a general way, that I very frequently go for long walks by myself.

Not to sound big headed, but if I was to inform all my friends of everything going on in my life I wouldn't have time to do any of it. So I don't go out of my way to ensure everyone knows everything, but things just come up in conversation surely?

To @Basquervill's example, which I've seen people take issue with more than once on MN, I wouldn't think twice about this. Maybe if I'd seen them recently and said "do you have any holidays booked?" and they said no then popped up on hols I would think it was odd- but I wouldn't think less of a friend who hadn't kept me in the loop. They have a life, I am just one part of it! I wouldn't expect constant updates of their whereabouts.

Just make sure you don't do what my mum used to do.. a friend of hers always had trouble with her kids, and whenever we went round for play dates I'd hear them talking and my mum would agree with her saying yeah I know what you mean, mine are like that - we weren't! We were THE most well behaved, geeky (boring!) kids on this planet. And hearing my mum lying about us like that, it really hurt.

My closest friends know absolutely everything, we’re generally chatting throughout the day on WhatsApp so we get an almost live play by play of what’s going on. It’s not for everybody but we’ve been friends for years and done this for years.

Just my normal friends know most things about my life but not what I do literally every day

Oh, my mother has literally done that all her life, but not just with child misbehaviour, with everything — she just reflects back whatever someone says to her, because she thinks that’s ‘being polite’, which can get really unpleasant when she’s nodding along with a racist. In fact she doesn’t agree with them at all, but it would never occur to her to challenge, dissent or even disengage.

My mum still does this now about child misbehaviour even though her child (me) is 40 years old 😐

I don’t expect or want, or offer constant updates. I really didn’t indicate or suggest that I was needy or weird. The friend I am referring to witholds information, as the OP mentioned.

To be fair I didn't say needy or weird, but apologies if you think I've insinuated that somehow.

I still maintain that there's a big different between you ask them something directly and they lie, or just not mentioning it when it comes to 'withholding information'. You didn't offer much context in your post so I'm not clear which you're referring to.

I’m usually worried that a friend HAS told me something and I’ve forgotten! I do listen, I swear, but someone might say ‘oh and Jane is recovering well from her operation’ and I’m left wracking my brain trying to remember what was the op for….
But yea I don’t intentionally not tell a friend something, unless I think they wouldn’t care to hear about something as it’s not at all relevant to them. I’d only tell a friend I was off for the weekend to visit my son if she had asked me to do something that weekend, for example.
I do think a friend withheld the fact she was in a book club as we often talk about what we are reading - I think because she didn’t want me to ask to join it (and I admit when I found out my first thought was why didn’t she ask me to join it)!

If me and my partner are out for dinner/drinks

I wouldn’t tell a close friend about going out for dinner or drinks unless something interesting happened eg “oh DH and I went for dinner last year and you’ll never guess who we bumped into!”

I don’t think any of my friends would tell me if they went out for dinner either, unless it was particularly noteworthy. Going out for dinner is nice if you’re the one doing it, but pretty mundane to hear about. I mean, I assume my friends go out for dinner regularly enough and they probably assume I do.

I don’t leave specific things out when talking to friends, but even close friends wouldn’t get told every minute detail of my life as it’s surely just far too boring.

And this I find particularly odd That I go for very long walks every weekend, alone - I can’t think why I would have any need to tell a friend I went for a walk!

Re the holidays point that people have brought up. One of my closest friends was texting me from a holiday she was on last year that I had no idea about - she sent me a photo from the beach and announced that she’d gone abroad fairly spontaneously. I was a bit envious, but that was it - I didn’t find it remotely weird that she hadn’t mentioned before.

I had a chat about holidays with another friend today and she mentioned that they’d booked something. Now I don’t know if she means for Feb half term or for Easter, but I have no need to know the dates and it didn’t occur to me to ask. After they come back she might discuss the holiday with me and she might not, I suppose it depends if there is anything interesting to say or gossip to share 🤷‍♀️

I haven’t shared my latest holiday plans with most of my friends yet either - it just hasn’t come up.

I guess the crux of my post is that my friend wants to know everything and can feel put out when I don't tell her everything .. literally everything. If my friend finds out she comments that I never told her .. even the walking.
She will arrange to meet up with me, I'll say i can't do the suggested date and she will say."why, what are you doing on that date"

So, why do you want someone who is (1) needy (2) nosey (3) from whom you feel the need to keep secrets in your life? She sounds like a dead loss. Why go along with this? Doesn't it make you feel a bit ridiculous that you can't mention going for a walk or having a personal trainer or going out for dinner with your partner -- or what? What is she going to do?

I think your friend is being weird and needy here. I think people who behave like this often have the opposite effect than what they want. People stop telling them stuff because they feel pressured to do to.

If you want to keep this friendship, I think you need to have a proper conversation with her about it and tell her that this is suffocating the friendship.

@AllMyPunySorrows The PT and walking - if she got wind then she would want to come to both and it would totally end up being all on her terms.
The PT - she would pay her share but would expect extra for her money and make that known to the PT. She would end up re-arranging timings to suit her and generally mess the PT around timing wise. It would be embarrassing.
The walk - she would want to turn it into something else very quicky if she knew I had several hours to spare. She is hard to say no to. Or she would want lunch out and a short walk or a much shortened version of what I had planned distance wise, or a different route completely or a car drive to a route. Selfishly I want a no-spend, long walk only without the car on my choice of route, my terms, my timings, my distance.